Beliefs and ICT: what can we learn from experienced educators?

Abstract

This article contributes to this special edition of Technology, Pedagogy and Education by looking at beliefs about knowing and learning held by 15 teacher educators with longstanding involvement in the Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education. Beliefs were challenging to identify but were ascribed to participants through examining accounts of practice on the basis of ‘what they held true’ about teaching and learning. The study uncovered a widely held core belief in knowing as constructivist and a more peripheral belief in learner-centred, or social constructivist, pedagogy. Identifying participants’ beliefs helped to understand the frameworks in which judgements about teaching and learning with ICT were made even if the impact of beliefs on every day practice could not be taken for granted. The study discusses the importance of beliefs as a stable point of reference in teaching and learning; tensions in categorising beliefs; and the particular role of beliefs in relation to engagement with ICT.

Keywords:

• beliefs
• normal desirable stages of teaching
• constructivism
• teaching careers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank those who were co-researchers in the Voices project, John Woollard, Victoria Cartwright and David Benzie, and the colleagues who spent time talking to the research team and later clarifying their comments. I am also grateful to Diane Levine for comments and to the reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. I would particularly like to thank Sarah Younie who took part in the original project and contributed ideas to several drafts of this article.